Posted
by
kdawsonon Sunday December 03, 2006 @04:56PM
from the buy-my-free-browser-please dept.

El Lobo writes "Looks like things are heating up again in the browser wars. Google has been openly supporting Firefox, so now Yahoo is displaying a new feature on search results pages for FireFox users. It appears that Yahoo is pushing downloads of IE7 from Microsoft and including itself as the default search engine installed in the file menu area." I got the invitation to download IE7 when running Firefox on a Mac, and even when running IE5 under CrossOver; but not when running IE7 under Parallels.

They are not "pushing". It's just an advertisement. I have seen worse, for example all those Firefox evangelistic campaigns like: "Make history with Firefox", "Rediscovery the web with Firefox", "Add a Firefox button to your web", "Firefox in your email signature", "Firefox site prefeared" . Hell I've even seen a "Screw IE" button once on some "respected" site
Nothing different from this "Firefox protects you" official Google site: http://www.google.com/firefox [google.com]
Fair enough. Nothing to see here, folks [bg]

I hit one page looking for a free/open source application (wish I could remember which one it was) and was greeted with a large banner at the top and an audio recording saying my computer was "infected" with internet explorer and I should switch to Firefox to remedy it.

Now I can understand the advantages and disadvantages of Firefox and IE, but annoying me by acting like a jackass isn't the way to convince me to switch.

I will say, after trying IE7 under Vista at work, trying Firefox 2.0, having issues with IE6 remembering my settings and finding out about IETab [mozdev.org], the switch was an easy decision for me. Pundit asshattery hurt rather than helped the situation.

There's no question that using Internet Explorer greatly compromises your internet security (now slightly less so with IE7), but yeah, an audio recording imforming you of a browser 'infection' is a bit much. I've even seen some relatively small anti-IE buttons that were similarly disrespectful. Insulting IE users isn't the way to win converts, even if Firefox is the most advanced, customizable and secure browser around.That said, I'm still a bit miffed that Mozilla hasn't remedied their JavaScript issues

I hit one page looking for a free/open source application (wish I could remember which one it was) and was greeted with a large banner at the top and an audio recording saying my computer was "infected" with internet explorer and I should switch to Firefox to remedy it.

Now I can understand the advantages and disadvantages of Firefox and IE, but annoying me by acting like a jackass isn't the way to convince me to switch.

After years of us, users of alternative browsers (opera, netscape 4, etc.), we've been fed up by litteraly thousands of "I don't care if it displays badly on your monitor because only IE matters" sites, you find offensive that a correctly designed site reminds you in a mild way that your attitude (among millions of "I pee on W3C standards" like you) has and will harm you ? Now that you're eating your own food, that sounds seriously funny. But I must admit a wave sound is a bit too much ; personaly, I validate my pages and make a warning that my site won't support any broken browser. This links to a list of good browsers, and IE isn't in it, full stop.

Do you consider it a strength that you are too lazy to code to standards and work around flaws in the most popular browser?

That's two questions wrapped in a single bias, really. I don't consider myself being too lazy for coding to standards. It's time consuming, and doesn't display an enormous difference with a more lax coding. So, it's overall more efforts. Especially when you stick to -strict DTDs as I do.

On the other hand, "work around flaws in the most popular browser" isn't only about lazyness ; I

I'm guessing you know almost nothing about web development.While this is hardly a good excuse, the fact that IE exists means that web technology is at about the year 2000. Anything developed since then is useless to us because IE does not support it. There are also many other cool technologies that we would love to use (like MathML) but can't because IE doesn't support it.

As for IE, there's no excuse for its utter crappiness. It's not like Microsoft is a poor, tiny software company. So sometimes web develop

When a market reaches maturity, the numerous competing firms consolidate into a small number of major competitors. Consider the personal-computer market. It once had numerous strong competitors: AST, Gateway, Compaq, Dell, HP, IBM, etc. Now, there are only a few major players: HP, Dell, and Lenovo.

The same happened in the market for 0x86 processors. The market once had numerous strong competitors: AMD, Nexgen, Cyrix, Centaur, and Intel. Now, there are only 2 major players: AMD and Intel.

The search market is facing a similar consolidation -- in 2 phases. The market once had numerous strong competitors: Microsoft, Google, AltaVista, Yahoo, AskJeeves, etc. After the first phase of consolidation, there are 3 major players: Microsoft, Yahoo, and Google. Now, the market is entering the second phase of consolidation. Like the personal computer, the search tool is a commodity product with almost no product differentiation. A search on Yahoo works just like a search on Microsoft Live. Why do we need 3 essentially identical products on the market?

The market appears to be consolidating into (1) Google being the major player and (2) the merger of Microsoft and Yahoo being the minor player. The recent loss of search market share from Yahoo to Google is also nudging Yahoo into being acquired by Microsoft.

When a market reaches maturity, the numerous competing firms consolidate into a small number of major competitors. Consider the personal-computer market. It once had numerous strong competitors: AST, Gateway, Compaq, Dell, HP, IBM, etc. Now, there are only a few major players: HP, Dell, and Lenovo.

And hundreds of thousands of generic small-medium shops. And Acer, Asus, LG, Toshiba...

The same happened in the market for 0x86 processors. The market once had numerous strong competitors: AMD, Nexgen, Cyrix, Centaur, and Intel. Now, there are only 2 major players: AMD and Intel.

Actually, Intel had been the only serious player up until quite recently. The addition of AMD is an increase in competition.

The search market is facing a similar consolidation -- in 2 phases. The market once had numerous strong competitors: Microsoft, Google, AltaVista, Yahoo, AskJeeves, etc. After the first phase of consolidation, there are 3 major players: Microsoft, Yahoo, and Google. Now, the market is entering the second phase of consolidation. Like the personal computer, the search tool is a commodity product with almost no product differentiation. A search on Yahoo works just like a search on Microsoft Live. Why do we need 3 essentially identical products on the market?

Your history is a bit off. There were several competing search engines (Yahoo, Altavista, Webcrawler, Lycos, Infoseek). We needed a bunch, because there wasn't a single one that could be used reliably. Then there was Google, who could provide comprehensive results, and is the only serious player n

It'll then come down to a war between Google UI and Yahoo UI. The latter will probably end up with extensions to take advantage of integration with Windows UI/Windows OS and/or use proprietary data standards. The former will unleash its dark fiber network in some way that makes its UI also essential for a highest-quality online experience.

Heh. The next software war is going to be in virtual reality on highspeed data networks. Snow Crash, here we come!

As a Mac user, and a fan of obscure music videos and Husker football games, it's been a serious source of annoyance that Launch and Yahoo Sports both require the latest version of Windows Media Player to run. And when there are so few diverse video sites out there, and the Oklahoma Sooners website linked straight to Yahoo Sports as the only place to hear the Big 12 Championship game for those of us living out of state, that means that sometimes you really miss out on content just for your choice of compute

I would agree if it was not for the fact that Microsoft acquired the browser market share that it currently has through questionable practices (read monopoly abuse) so the tactics it is using to target the users of it's biggest competition should be limited. From Yahoo!s perspective it probably makes sense financially to do such a deal with Microsoft, but inherently this is more about Microsoft trying to push it's browse platform as a way to lock users in to it's main platform. Therefore it would be better if Microsoft was prohibited from doing such deals because that would probably increase the competition in the marketplace and Yahoo! could make a similar deal with an alternative browser instead (e.g Opera).

But I would say that in the so called browser wars the government has largely failed at performing their role in limiting Microsofts abuse of their operating system monopoly in achieving a monopoly position in another market. It is not illegal to have a monopoly, it is just illegal to abuse it.

The idea is that MS is exactly what you say, "Anti-competitive". Competition generally spurs innovation. If MS is trying to win the "browser wars" by flexing their monopoly rather than by making the best browser, then competition is failing to spur improvement. If the "browser wars" were between opera and firefox, or something like that, that is, two browsers not at all tied to the operating system, then whoever made the best browser would tend to win, and strongarm tactics would not enter into the pictu

"That aside, why is it that everyone makes such a big freakin' deal about what browser Joe Customer uses?"

It's really not that complicated:

1) When the dominate browser is the least standards-compliant, and actually pushes proprietary features instead of their standards-compliant equivalents, it encourages a proprietary web and is detrimental to everyone else not on the proprietary platform. It is also detrimental to those ON the proprietary platform, because their costs are kept in-check by competiti

I've never seen firefox advertising in google while I used it with IE. Just because they have a firefox-exclusive home page doesn't means they spam people to use firefox, like Yahoo is doing. Instead, they hire firefox developers and offer monetary incentives if a adsense user agrees to advertise firefox.

I don't have IE6 to test with, but I got the impression that this was more of an "Upgrade your browser" ad than "Use IE" advertisement. Most of the people I know didn't even know an update to IE was available. I'm guessing this advertisement was targeted at anyone not using IE, not just Firefox users.

I do think it's rather silly though, that they bother showing the advertisement to users who can't run IE7 anyway because it won't run on their operating system.

Just like every other lemming around. Nothing to be proud of in particular.

Many BSD users have been Linux-free this whole time, other than the ones that teethed on Linux, then quickly realized there was something better (like me). Just because someone doesn't use Linux doesn't automatically mean they are using an inferior OS.

Since you're asking in curiosity, I'm responding, not flaming whatsoever.BSD is the base that Apple's OSX is built upon, among MANY other successful BSD derivatives, so I am not speaking without knowledge here.

BSD is the base that was copied to form much of the software that the FSF has. GNU stands for "Gnu's not Unix!" which is recursive, and an "inside joke."

Basically the way it was described to me best was that Linux (not the kernel but the userspace more than anything) emulates and copies Unix, and BSD

BSD is the base that was copied to form much of the software that the FSF has. GNU stands for "Gnu's not Unix!" which is recursive, and an "inside joke."

Basically the way it was described to me best was that Linux (not the kernel but the userspace more than anything) emulates and copies Unix, and BSD.

Think about it this way - car manufacturers often copy other models and features. Some are better, some are worse.

When you say Linux (not the kernel but the userspace more than anything) , you obviously mean "GNU". Just wanted to clarify that, you missed it by so little that I wanted to make it clear for casual readers that don't understand the difference between GNU and Linux.The whole idea of GNU was really to copy Unix, and make it free, you are correct.

BSD has other (different, not better, not worse) freedoms than the GPL (which is associated most with Linux). There is the freedom to go proprietary, which many exercise. There is the freedom to interface much proprietary software with it.

The way I see it, BSD is about giving the most reasonable freedom possible to the developer.A developer is free to do mostly whatever he wants, with BSD.

Binary compatability across a version tree... in other words, if you are running v4.1 BSD and go to 4.2, your drivers still work, good thing for binary drivers (nvidia, ati, etc)... down side is it isn't as well supported..

I think that the Linux side of things should *REALLY* start to emphasize binary compatible trees at the kernel level, as I honestly get tired of having to update drivers every kernel update... Sometimes things break when this happens.. far less likely with BSD over Linux.

Emerge which is Gentoo's claim to fame is modelled after the BSD ports system, which has been around far longer. BSD's binary package system has been around longer than apt, yum, or other linux distribution systems is stable, and consistant.

The down side is BSD hasn't reached any critical mass. The FreeBSD, and I would assume the OpenBSD installers are a painful experience getting a system setup, especially getting software raid working (though I prefer hardware). Driver support is limited, and most new drivers are ports of linux drivers, however the support layer is pretty good. There is also a linux compatability layer which will allow for most linux binaries to run.

For the desktop side, PC-BSD [pcbsd.org] has made huge strides, it's very easy to get installed, and use... there are a few other desktop oriented versions, but imho this is the best. It's installer is based in QT and is basically a FreeBSD 6.x install with X-Windows, and KDE installed an preconfigured, there are also some extra configuration utilities that are enhanced, in addition to some custom utils.

While you are correct in that FF is leaps and bounds ahead of IE in terms of standards compliance, it's worth noting that FF still doesn't pass the ACID2 [webstandards.org] test like Opera and some others do.

While you are correct that the current release of FF does not pass the acid2 test, it is worth noting that the code to correct this is and achieve acid2 compliance is included in the current development branch of FF, and it will be operational in the next release.

The "development branch", the "alpha", the "beta" and the "release candidate" don't count. If you want to compare development branches, Opera [opera.com], Konqueror [kde.org], and Safari make Firefox look even more pathetic.

Honestly, I develop in windows, mainly because I like asp.net and VS 2005, I use a windows XP vmware setup under Ubuntu 6.10. I test in IE6 (now IE7, since it's being force-fed), Firefox 2, Opera 9, Konqueror and Safari under Windows, OSX, and Linux (where a given browser is available).

It would be nice to see Konqueror's browser engine ported to a usable browser for Windows, for at least testing... I finally got around (today) to tweaking my hobby website for non-windows users, given that pt sizes are d

but used invalid CSS that Firefox and IE handled gracefully, but incorrectly.

See here is again is what people don't get...

One of the reasons IE became as popular as it did is that it didn't 'fail' when pages were formatted improperly or 'downloaded' improperly (remember dial up?)

In the 4.x browser war days there were a couple of things that MADE people prefer IE or Netscape. One of them was the fact that a missing tag at the end of a table wouldn't cause the page to not display AT ALL as it did in Netscape, so even if the page was messed up, IE would try to render it based on the information it had.

Now a lot of people see this as a flaw, but if you look at the technology it is actually a 'smart' feature that the browser would at the very least display a page even if it wasn't formed properly. Call it a form of programming 'intelligence'.

This is NO different than the CSS failures of IE and Firefox of today. They support 'legacy' tags that both browsers used and are not 'compliant', and they also will try to render page parts even if the tags and improperly formed. THIS IS WHY neither will ever fully pass all the CSS page tests on the web like ACID2, as they don't test for ability, but they MAINLY test for a browser's INABILITY to handle bad data and the developers expect the browser to NOT display the improperly formed tags.

This is really an argument that can go either way, as I see benefits in 'forcing' compliance, but I also understand that some sites are old and their data would be inaccessible or lost if every browser only conformed to strict CSS and ignored legacy tags or malformed tags. This is where I go, well it isn't hurting anyone for the browsers to be a bit smarter than the site developers.

Also everyone applauds Safari for being strict CSS, but the side note in this story is Safari also doesn't have to have any intelligence built in, nor does it worry about or handle old tags or malformed pages, they all become 'unworthy' and Safari isn't 'smart' enough to render them.

As for the browser wars of 4.x, there were a couple of other reasons IE was prefered over Netscape. Like the page refreshing when it was resized on Netscape or raw display performance.

In the end, I would pick Firefox or IE7 and their 'flaws', legacy support, and ability to render malformed pages over Safari any day. Web developers tend to suck in general and I would rather have some intelligence in my browser to help counteract crap pages, even if it means the browser will fail CSS standards.

However if you are web developer, just design the page with proper standards, watch for IE7 and not assume it renders like IE6 which sucked on several CSS abilities. Then just go for standards. PS the above posts are correct - TEST IN EVERY browser you can get your hands on, there are like 5 major browser players, it is not hard to do.

However if you are web developer, just design the page with proper standards, watch for IE7 and not assume it renders like IE6 which sucked on several CSS abilities. Then just go for standards.

This actually brings up a point against your whole argument.

I mostly develop under Firefox, and I develop with XHTML. This is because if I forget a closing tag, Firefox will tell me about it. It won't just make the page look uglier, it'll tell me I have a problem. I also use the Web Development Toolbar, which tells

mostly develop under Firefox, and I develop with XHTML. This is because if I forget a closing tag, Firefox will tell me about it. It won't just make the page look uglier, it'll tell me I have a problem. I also use the Web Development Toolbar, which tells me when I've enabled "quirks mode" -- if I haven't, then I know I'm not relying on any Firefox-specific intelligence.

I don't totally disagree with you, but here is where we are all focusing on the wrong end of this situation.

Until a browser gives informative warnings by default and that can be switched off if needed, preferably by site, browsers that render broken sites are just that. Broken. Silently acquiescing to broken code is broken behavior. It needs to be visible to be fixed.

This isn't a browser's responsibility, this is the design package's responsibility. We are past the days of people using notepad for major sites, so we also should be past the days of relying on the browser to tell us what we messed up.

I've been using Yahoo mail with Firefox for years now, and it renders just fine. Even the new beta "Web 2.0 powered" interface renders fine. I've never had any issues viewing mail with it. I've noticed on the new interface the preview pane (the bottom pane where the contents of the message appear when you click on it) is ridiculously small by default, but you can easily resize it the same way you would on standalone mail apps like Thunderbird.

... it's about all of Yahoo's cool stuff. Mail, Music, Shopping, Finance, Auctions, etc. Yahoo has the best personalized web experience, in my opinion, and it doesn't have anything to do with their search.

I've found that the search-engine bar on firefox has actually encouraged me to use yahoo (and other search engines) because it makes it so easy, I type the search terms in once and then just pick different search engines from the drop down menu. It is just as easy as going to multiple pages of results from a single engine.

FWIW, in my searches for hi-rez CD cover art, yahoo image search was often a better tool than google.

It's not really a big deal because if the experience on Firefox really better than IE, as we tout it is, then the converters will have no choice but to stick. Even if they download IE to see if it's better, the better browser WILL in fact win. We are not talking about people who are reluctant to switch, it's those who already have. If they are not having an enjoyable experience on firefox then let em leave who the hell cares?

``It's not really a big deal because if the experience on Firefox really better than IE''

That's not the only issue. Another issue is that IE has the bulk of the market share, especially among non-tech-savvy users. This means web developers always have to consider how IE behaves on their sites, even if the behavior is clearly a bug in IE. For years, this has stalled progress on the web, because Microsoft would not support certain features in IE, making it unattractive for web designers and developers to use them.

The growing market share of Firefox has led more sites to include certain niceties, even if they didn't actually work well or at all in IE. This has increased the attractiveness of Firefox, as well as compelled Microsoft to improve their browser.

Arguably, it would be a Bad Thing if this development were stopped just now it's starting to yield fruit. Competition between web browsers is good, it leads to better browsers and better sites.

There is definately a page on my university's site (dont remember where though, sorry) that exploits an IE CSS bug to display a firefox download link only to IE users. No fancy browser-checking code here, just some valid CSS that is improperly displayed on IE.

But the irony of the CSS hacks is that you dont have to use browser detection or some silly IE "feature". It is valid CSS that doesnt show on other browsers and only shows because of broken CSS in IE. If microsoft was to fix the CSS, it would eliminate advertising for their competition in addition to better supporting to the standards which would make some people happy.

Of course if the CSS hack wasnt widespread, there wouldnt be much gain from eliminating the advertising...

Yes, Yahoo! actually used Google results up through the beginning of 2004. They dropped Google and went with a derivative of the Inktomi search engine which they had acquired through the beginning of 2003.

My school started doing this last year.. I navigated to their registration site with safari and got a nice little "we won't let you go to this site with your browser of choice" message..

I promptly enabled the debug menu and chose MSIE6 as my user agent.. it then let me in and I had absolutely no problems doing what I wanted to do.

Now this may become a much more sticky problem when they start taking advantage of the "remote attestation" in treacherous computing to prevent you from lying to the servers of anticompetitive schticks like this school of mine.

Yours isn't the only one. I'm a University of Phoenix [phoenix.edu] grad, and they have a block on non-IE browsers on their student access site [phoenix.edu]. Worse, one student I know of who goes there tells me that some classes have requirements to read DRMed eBooks with Adobe Reader, and of course, all though there is an Adobe Reader for her platform of choice (GNU/Linux), it doesn't support the DRM.

My bank started doing something similar recently. They don't block IE or Firefox. However, they do block Konqueror. I simply changed the user agent ID and everything works the same. I don't think it's really a conspiracy, rather poor coding on the part of the web designer.

Of more concern to me is the actions of my local TV news station. In the past they offered video feeds in Real format. Real works on all platforms and with all browsers as far as I know. However, they recently switched to some new propri

Sometime I think it would be really nifty to see civil/criminal charges for actions like this. Microsoft IS a convicted monopolist, specifically because of IE. Forcing use of IE is somewhat akin to "aiding and abetting" criminal activity.

I'm all for getting riled up and everything, but you know, it's rather more likely that Yahoo is pushing IE7 on anyone who's not running IE7 (so Firefox, Safari, IE6 or lower, etc) instead of specifically trying to get you to switch from Firefox.

This isn't really shocking or terrible or anything, as it seems like Yahoo has a branded download of IE ("IE7 Optimized for Yahoo" is visible in one of the screenshots) and doesn't have a branded version of the other browsers. Does it really matter what browser they advertise?

Why should they bother? Anyone who can update to IE7 will, as IE7 is (or will be soon in certain areas that don't have it already) pushed through Windows Automatic Updates. What is the point of Yahoo advertising IE7 to anyone?

When using Opera 9 (OSX), I got another ad, for Yahoo Answers. When using Safari, I got an ad for the search bar. So this ad is targeted at Firefox, which seems reasonable. Safari is not a target as MS has discontinued development of IE for the Mac, and has said people should use Safari. Opera is probably too small to bother, and not growing in market share.

I don't see a problem with this. I you don't want to download IE7,.. fine. No hurt feelings.
I don't use Yahoo's services; I prefer Google. Google wants me to download and install its Google Toolbar, Google Desktop search engine, et cetera. I choose not to and I did not experience their offerings as a nuisance or anything more evil than what I experience when I walk into a random stones-and-bricks store.
By the way, Google does not promote FireFox as a form of pure altruism. Businesses make business decis

Very bottom of the page. I just got it running Firefox 2.0 on Linux (Kubuntu).

THAT'S what passes for "pushing" these days? An "MS IE Optimized for Yahoo" ad at the BOTTOM of the page, below all the results, navbar, etc.? "Pushing" IE to me would be, say, blocking use of search.yahoo.com with other browsers or something - and even that would be questionable "pushing" since there are plenty of other search engines, and I don't think Yahoo's is so great that I could live without it (in fact, until just now, I haven't used it since Google appeared).

If that's pushing IE, then websites should feel free to continue pushing things in that manner. It's the most unobtrusive ad I've ever seen. I didn't even notice it until you pointed it out to me.

So Yahoo seems to be advertising its own search service more than anything else. Huh...who'd have though a search company advertising their own search service - the horror. They are hardly pushing it - that'd be forcing you to download IE7 with the yahoo toolbar bundled and blocking dedicated FF+typically Google users like me.

Seems as if right now, when I'm performing a search on Yahoo.com using Safari, there's an 'ad' on the bottom of the page leading to a download of the Yahoo Toolbar for IE or Firefox (explicitly for Win, Mac, Linux). On the other hand, when I use Firefox (under Mac OSX as well), there is the link for IE7 instead.

I just tried a search on Yahoo and got the same ad. They must have checked the User Agent string to see that I was using Firefox. But why didn't they check to see if I was using Windows? -- why bother advertising IE to me if I can't run it on my system?

Yahoo does not get it. Can you imagine that even now, Yahoo's Launchcast service does not support Firefox! When one attempts to use it, he is faced with this "Error Code: 24."

No wonder they (Yahoo) are a struggling company by some measures these days. It does not have to be that way. It's because of this reason that it is my mission to avoid Yahoo services as much as possible.

The pushing of Internet Explorer 7 is yet another arrogant and bigoted notion that tends to lean on the premise that all internet u

I used to set my family's computers homepage to yahoo. But they have since redone their TV listings so that they load like crap. Before that they made it so that many of their videos would only work with Window's media player.

It's not just that they're pushing ie7. It's that they are becoming too microsoft-flash-ajax centric, especially for people with older computers and slow connections (yes, not everyone can afford broadband/new computers). Yahoo doesn't really care about these users, I guess because they are not the ones they want to market to. But I do have a broadband connection and Yahoo's TV listings load horribly now (they just changed them to an ajax layout).

Yahoo is really taking steps backwards, not forwards. I hope that their deal with Microsoft was worth it, because they are losing people heading to their website.

Disclaimer IIARNY (I am a relatively new yahoo)-People see what they want to see, I guess... Yes, Yahoo! does tend towards flashy / cool, but do me a favor and surf on over there with images off / css off / flashblock, etc and tell me what you see.

(go ahead, I'll wait)

If that's the web you want then get cracking and "make it so", it's not that hard. See what it's like to surf with a screenreader or keyboard only. (here's a search for you: accessibility on developer.yahoo.com [google.com])... or on one of the A-Grade [yahoo.com]

Although I am a Firefox user, personally I don't see anything wrong with what Yahoo is doing here. They are using THEIR website to promote a product of THEIR choice which may also be configured to use Yahoo as the default search engine. They are not forcing anyone to download IE7 and unless you run out and buy a copy of Vista before the end of January it was not pre-installed on your computer. Granted, IE7 was listed by Microsoft as a critical update in their update services, but that was the doing of Micro

However, I did notice it doing that every time I accessed Yahoo using Firefox. I waited until I saw their actual advertisement version, clicked the "Ad Feedback" button, and told them what I thought about being asked to switch browsers.

I think it's a good thing to show the ad to IE 6- users on Windows, but it doesn't make sense anywhere else.

So given that I have XpHomeSP2 + current patches, MS Office 2003 + current patches & I use non MS for everthing else, then why am I worried? When MS makes it a hard requirement to run my current OS then I'll worry.

"I've noticed that some of the games that yahoo hosts don't work properly on firefox."

OK I am going to burn some Karma and not post AC - but how is this off topic? It is a/. story about yahoo pushing IE7 and someone notes that some of Yahoo's games do not work on FF. If Yahoo is writing games that work only with IE7 then this is another reason that Yahoo might be pushing IE7. Whomever moded this 'offtopic' needs glasses - as they hit the wrong button - or needs to not have mod points.

Netscape [netscape.com] does still exist, but has bloated beyond all belief and no one with a shred of decency or social conscience uses it now. It's based off Firefox code (just as Mozilla came from Netscape) but also acts as a wrapper around IE 6, thereby giving you the security holes of two browsers for the price of one. It's big, it's ugly, it's slow, and it's not coming anywhere near my computer...